Women and Labour Conference

October 10, 1995
Issue 

By Karen Fletcher and Kath Gelber SYDNEY — Around 500 women and a sprinkling of men attended the 5th Women and Labour Conference held at Macquarie University, September 29 to October 1. The conference attracted feminists who had been active in the second wave and newer feminists, to discuss the way forward for the women's movement. The conference's emphasis on research topics and well-known keynote speakers reflected the state of the women's movement today, both in terms of the large number of women who are working within the bureaucracy and the decline of the activist grassroots base. More than 130 women presented talks on a broad range of topics from enterprise bargaining to reproductive technologies. The conference's keynote address was delivered by Ann Curthoys, Professor of history at the Australian National University and an organiser of the first Women and Labour Conference in 1978. Curthoys sketched a history of the four previous women and labour conferences, recalling their evolution from an initial academic focus on women's labour history into movement conferences. She commented on the conference's influence on public policy and recalled the heated debates generated in past years by the issue of racism. She commented also on the continuing debate over men's participation in the conferences, calling it perhaps the "least constructive" of the debates on the conference floor. Major plenaries featured well known feminists guaranteed to pull a crowd. The second day's plenary, entitled "Women's voices/women's rights in the Australian Constitution", included Pat O'Shane, Dale Spender, Jocelyne Scutt, Mary Kalantsis and founding member of the Australian Women's Party, Jenny Hughey. The shortage of question time in all major plenaries, however, left little room for discussion on the presentations. For example, although speakers in the major plenaries focussed on the representation of women in government, there was little elaboration about the politics of women representatives. The final plenary, "Women and Labour — Towards 2000", featured ACTU president-elect Jenny George who spoke of the threat posed to women's wages and working conditions by the possibility of a federal Coalition government after the next election. She pledged that the ACTU would fight Coalition moves to dismantle the award system, but failed to raise the issue of the Labor government's own record in dismantling that system. Issues facing Aboriginal women were not sidelined, with speakers on major plenaries and in a number of seminars. Doreen Kartinyeri, an Aboriginal family historian at the South Australian Museum, received a standing ovation following her account of her involvement in the Hindmarsh Island affair. It was Aboriginal women's stories committed to paper by Kartinyeri which were contained in the envelope mistakenly sent to and opened by federal MP Ian McLachlan. Kartinyeri has now been ordered by the Royal Commission into the affair to deliver the papers for examination. Kartinyeri said she would rather go to jail than give up the papers which contain Aboriginal women's business, for which she received widespread support from the conference floor. The final session debated the issue of men's participation in future women and labour conferences and considered a variety of options ranging from allowing men full and equal participation rights to banning them from the conferences altogether. Most participants in the discussion favoured men's right to participate, but under certain conditions. Women from Deakin University in Victoria offered to organise the 6th Women and Labour Conference in 1997.

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